Speaker 1: The stories you will hear are from real people with
Speaker 1: real experiences with the unknown. Welcome to the Dixie Cryptid
Speaker 1: What If It's True? Podcast? All right, here we go.
Speaker 2: My name is Bernard. I'm a sixty five year old
Speaker 2: retired all filled worker from South Mississippi. I've lived my
Speaker 2: entire life in a small town about an hour south
Speaker 2: of Jackson, Mississippi, called Bogacheetah. Bogacheetah is Chocktaw for Big Creek.
Speaker 2: Many Native American tribes settled here in the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: and many property owners discover burial mounds on their properties here.
Speaker 2: My family farmed all the land we owned, and as children,
Speaker 2: we would spend the summer searching for arrowheads after or
Speaker 2: the fields were plowed. We probably found hundreds of them altogether,
Speaker 2: and we still occasionally find them today. Once I graduated
Speaker 2: high school, I set out to make a living in
Speaker 2: the Gulf of Mexico all Patch. Looking back, I wish
Speaker 2: I had continued to farm and kept up with my
Speaker 2: family's dairy farm business. The hard manual labor of drilling
Speaker 2: rigs took a toll on my body, but it allowed
Speaker 2: me to provide for my family and lived for the
Speaker 2: most part, an upper middle class life. Years ago, when
Speaker 2: my son was seventeen years old, I called home to
Speaker 2: check on him, as I did daily, and while I
Speaker 2: was away at work, my mother and my sister looked
Speaker 2: after him. On this day, he asked if he and
Speaker 2: a friend could take a bigfoot researcher onto my property.
Speaker 2: Apparently his buddy had seen a creature across the road
Speaker 2: and enter an area of my property the week prior.
Speaker 2: His friend reported the sighting to the BFRO and a
Speaker 2: man wanted to take a look around. Well, I laughed,
Speaker 2: and I told him that he could go and do
Speaker 2: whatever they needed to do. I had spent the majority
Speaker 2: of my life in those woods and never saw a
Speaker 2: sign of a strange creature being there. The old men
Speaker 2: in my town would tell tales of skunk apes that
Speaker 2: lived in the Bogacheta River swamps, and a few years earlier,
Speaker 2: a preacher's daughters said the creature jumped from a tree
Speaker 2: and slapped her car late one night. I didn't know
Speaker 2: if any of these stories were a fact, but I
Speaker 2: later found out for myself that it was all too real.
Speaker 2: The years passed, and fast forward to twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: I have a ten year old grandson who has become
Speaker 2: the center of my universe. I wanted to spend all
Speaker 2: the time I could with him and a couple of
Speaker 2: COVID mandates. Later, I decided to retire and enjoy my
Speaker 2: golden years. My son and grandson loved deer hunt. Knowing this,
Speaker 2: I spent months preparing deer plots and getting them set
Speaker 2: up to have good places to hunt for the upcoming season.
Speaker 2: A few weeks before opening day, I started to notice
Speaker 2: that hogs were destroying one of our plots near the
Speaker 2: river swamp. I went to my local feed store and
Speaker 2: bought a hay ring, a net wire, a spring loaded
Speaker 2: swing gate. I took these items in my welding machine
Speaker 2: and fabricated an indestructible hog trap to try and lessen
Speaker 2: the population of these pests. We kill and eat these
Speaker 2: hogs all the time. Now I knew I had takers
Speaker 2: for any that I would catch, because properly cooked, they
Speaker 2: were fine eating. I placed the trap beside the food
Speaker 2: plot and attached the trigger wire for the spring gate
Speaker 2: to a bucket of corn inside, and once those pigs
Speaker 2: moved that bucket, the gates would close and they would
Speaker 2: be trapped. My years in the oil field afforded me
Speaker 2: some of the finer redneck things in life. Afore wheel
Speaker 2: drive pickup and a side by side and an arsenal
Speaker 2: of gun from pistols to some automatic ar style rifles.
Speaker 2: With many Wi Fi game cameras. I had one camera
Speaker 2: that had seen better days. It would take and send
Speaker 2: me pictures just fine during the day, but had lost
Speaker 2: its ability to flash and take pictures at night, so
Speaker 2: it was the perfect candidate to watch my hog trap.
Speaker 2: It would send me pictures the next morning to let
Speaker 2: me know if the trap had been sprung and if
Speaker 2: I had any hogs to go and remove. I set
Speaker 2: the trap up on Friday afternoon, and by early evening
Speaker 2: I got a picture showing me I had four hogs
Speaker 2: in the trap. The next morning, my son and I
Speaker 2: pulled up to the trap just as the sun peeked out,
Speaker 2: but we were greeted with an empty trap. The gate
Speaker 2: was closed and there was no damage or holes dug
Speaker 2: under it. This trap was anchored to the ground using
Speaker 2: six t posts, each with four fence tie wires fastening
Speaker 2: the trap, and all of them were intact. We found
Speaker 2: hair on the top end of the net wire, which
Speaker 2: was at my eye level and I'm six foot two.
Speaker 2: Some of the hair was dark, it was almost black
Speaker 2: like the hogs I had seen in the photos, but
Speaker 2: some of the hair was long and light brown. After
Speaker 2: handling it, the smell on my hand was enough to
Speaker 2: make a maggot gag. It smelled like a crab house
Speaker 2: on a tuna boat. Oh man, that's a classic. We
Speaker 2: reset the trap and headed back home, and just like clockwork,
Speaker 2: when it was early evening, I received another photo telling
Speaker 2: me there were more hogs in the trap. But the
Speaker 2: next day I awoke to the photo from my game
Speaker 2: cam of a hog sitting on top of my empty
Speaker 2: sprung hog trap. I was baffled, how were these hogs
Speaker 2: getting out? Again? We reset the trap and around four
Speaker 2: pm we arrived and found the empty trap with more
Speaker 2: hair stuck to the wire. This time, we took more
Speaker 2: time to investigate, and we noticed the grass was beaten
Speaker 2: down in a path leading from the woods. Well this
Speaker 2: got me thinking was someone coming in and taking these hogs?
Speaker 2: I pondered on this the rest of the night. If
Speaker 2: someone was taking them, then how were they doing it.
Speaker 2: There was no blood inside the trap or around it,
Speaker 2: and the hogs aren't exactly cooperative, so picking even a
Speaker 2: small one up and handing it over to another person
Speaker 2: outside the trap would be damn near impossible. I decided
Speaker 2: to go back the next day and set the trap
Speaker 2: and then get into my box doAnd with my thermal
Speaker 2: scope equipped ar ten and see what I could see.
Speaker 2: A few hours later, two large hogs entered my trap
Speaker 2: and the gate shut. Now I had the bait and
Speaker 2: I was going to wait and see if anything took it.
Speaker 2: Night came and I scanned the woodline with my thermal.
Speaker 2: Around ten PM, I heard what sounded like whistles coming
Speaker 2: from the woods where the grass trail had led. I
Speaker 2: pulled up my thermal again and I saw heat signals
Speaker 2: moving through the trees, and after a couple of minutes
Speaker 2: I saw what sort of resembled a human emerged from
Speaker 2: the tree line and walked toward the trout. When he
Speaker 2: got there, he had his hands at waste level, with
Speaker 2: his palms straight out. I tried to figure out why
Speaker 2: he was standing like that when I realized he was
Speaker 2: so tall that his hands were resting on the net
Speaker 2: wire of the trout. The large hogs immediately went to
Speaker 2: the opposite side of the troup, but I could see
Speaker 2: that the top of their backs were just above this
Speaker 2: thing's knee. It wasn't but a few seconds later that
Speaker 2: I heard another series of whistles, and two more large
Speaker 2: figures emerged from the woods and walked to the trap.
Speaker 2: Once they arrived, the first creature gingerly climbed over into
Speaker 2: the trap and grabbed one of the hogs, and within
Speaker 2: seconds its loud squealing stop and it was handed over
Speaker 2: to one of the creatures on the outside of the trap.
Speaker 2: The second hog was silenced and handed over, and the
Speaker 2: creature climbed back out and walked with the others back
Speaker 2: into the woods. Well, I couldn't believe my eyes. I
Speaker 2: stayed up watching until the batteries and my thermal died,
Speaker 2: and then I lay down on the floor of my
Speaker 2: box stand and I tried to sleep, but there was
Speaker 2: no way I was climbing down until after daylight. About
Speaker 2: an hour after daybreak, I climbed down and walked to
Speaker 2: my truck, and I called my son and I told
Speaker 2: him what I had seen, and he wanted to go
Speaker 2: back that night to see for himself, and that's what
Speaker 2: we did, and the exact same thing happened again, only
Speaker 2: this time three hogs were trapped, and instead of two
Speaker 2: additional figures emerging from the woods, there were three. My
Speaker 2: son watched in silence through my thermal binoculars while I
Speaker 2: watched through my scope. After what we had witnessed, we
Speaker 2: both agreed that we weren't climbing down until daybreak, and
Speaker 2: when we climbed down that morning, we walked out to
Speaker 2: the trap. Those things have to be nearly ten feet tall, dad,
Speaker 2: my son said. Just as he said it, we heard
Speaker 2: something near the woods. A second later, a boar hog
Speaker 2: with its nose to the ground, ran out. I quickly
Speaker 2: shouldered my rifle and took it down, and my son
Speaker 2: and I walked over to it. It was over two
Speaker 2: hundred pounds. We had about a half a mile to
Speaker 2: walk to the truck, so we decided to leave it
Speaker 2: beside a tree stump at the base of our box
Speaker 2: stand and then come back with the side by side
Speaker 2: to haul it out. We got back home, loaded up
Speaker 2: the side by side and came straight back to remove
Speaker 2: the boar. But when we got there, it was gone.
Speaker 2: There were no drag marks, no pack of codes tearing
Speaker 2: into it. It was just gone. That's when my son
Speaker 2: noticed a pile of twenty or so pecans sitting on
Speaker 2: top of a tree stump. Each of them I'm perfectly shelled. Wow,
Speaker 2: they left us some pecans, Dad, my son said. I
Speaker 2: asked him what he meant. He explained that last dear
Speaker 2: season he had been sitting in that stand eating pecans
Speaker 2: and throwing the shells out the window onto the ground.
Speaker 2: So the bigfoot must have assumed that would be a
Speaker 2: good trade pecinds for pigs. My son collected the gifted pekins,
Speaker 2: and from their smell, he didn't eat them, but he
Speaker 2: took them with us. Nonetheless, we didn't set the trap again,
Speaker 2: and a few days later I brought a trailer and
Speaker 2: removed it in preparation for deer season. In Mississippi, youth
Speaker 2: deer season opens a few days earlier than rifle season
Speaker 2: for all ages. Opening morning, I took my grandson just
Speaker 2: after daylight. A six point buck and a doe walked out,
Speaker 2: and my grandson is a crack shot with a rifle,
Speaker 2: and before I could blink, he shot the buck and
Speaker 2: then the dough with a Savage Youth Model two forty three.
Speaker 2: We climbed down to assess his first kills of the season,
Speaker 2: and when I told him we had two to skin,
Speaker 2: he told me, no, Pap Paul, just one. Let's take
Speaker 2: the buck and leave the dough for them, you know,
Speaker 2: the big feats. Well, how could I argue with that.
Speaker 2: We loaded the buck, pulled the dough over near our stand,
Speaker 2: and left and we got home and skinned his trophy,
Speaker 2: and later that day we loaded up the corn to
Speaker 2: take to a nearby feeder. My grandson asked if we
Speaker 2: could ride to see if they had taken his gift,
Speaker 2: and when we got there, we saw that they had
Speaker 2: not only that, but on the stump laid a beautiful fox,
Speaker 2: squirrel tail and a large Indian spearhead. It's not like
Speaker 2: an arrowhead, it's bigger, and something we searched and searched
Speaker 2: for as children, but we never found them. My grandson
Speaker 2: was rightfully excited, and quite frankly, I was too, And
Speaker 2: when I got him home, he told us father about it.
Speaker 2: Those things won't forget anything. My son said, what do
Speaker 2: you mean, I asked him, This isn't the first time
Speaker 2: my son has been down there near the swamp. Don't
Speaker 2: you remember me taking him squirrel hunting down there last year.
Speaker 2: They were watching him harvest squirrels, and I bet they've
Speaker 2: been around so long that they remember you searching all
Speaker 2: that area for arrowheads. My son's words replayed in my
Speaker 2: head the rest of that day. How long have these
Speaker 2: things been watching us? How many of them are there?
Speaker 2: Since that day, we have continued to hunt and gift.
Speaker 2: I recently put the hog trap back down there, and
Speaker 2: I reseid it a couple of times a week for them.
Speaker 2: I hope those hogs are feeding their group, maybe they're
Speaker 2: young ones. Also hope that our friendship with them and
Speaker 2: kindness carry on. Maybe when I'm gone, they will keep
Speaker 2: a watchful eye over my son and grandson and other
Speaker 2: generations to come. Thank you for reading my letter, Signed
Speaker 2: Bernard Oh. I just love that story. That's a story
Speaker 2: from my home state. He's quite a few miles south
Speaker 2: of me. I live in the north part of the state,
Speaker 2: and this man lives south of Jackson, Bogacheetah. I've never
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever been there, but I enjoyed
Speaker 2: reading this story so much, not just because it's from
Speaker 2: my state, but this man knows how to tell a story.
Speaker 2: He knows how to recount the thing Lily, Lily, what
Speaker 2: are you barking at? Lily? She thinks she's a junk
Speaker 2: yard dog. Anyway, The point is I love this story.
Speaker 2: I wanted to say one thing. I am real busy
Speaker 2: with work now, but it's only going to last about
Speaker 2: another week. If you're commenting and you're noticing, I'm not
Speaker 2: letting you know that I read your comment like with
Speaker 2: a heart, or with a thumbs up, or with a reply.
Speaker 2: It's just because I'm trying to Lily, Lily, She's every
Speaker 2: time I talk to her, she just keeps barking. Anyway.
Speaker 2: I'm just busy trying to put keep podcasts coming out
Speaker 2: because I love doing these I love doing these stories,
Speaker 2: and uh, I just don't have time to go through
Speaker 2: the comment section. But I will for the last three
Speaker 2: or four videos, the last three or four short videos
Speaker 2: I've done, I will go back and read the comments,
Speaker 2: and I've kind of scanned through them a couple of times.
Speaker 2: But I'm working ten eleven hours a day, and uh,
Speaker 2: when that day's over, I just go in. I don't
Speaker 2: want to even look at my phone or my computer
Speaker 2: or anything. So I want to let you know that
Speaker 2: thanks for listening to this podcast. I certainly appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Let me go over here and see. Uh, she's probably
Speaker 2: barking out a butterfly or a spider. I don't know.
Speaker 2: She's she thinks she's pretty tough, and she'll she'll see
Speaker 2: a butterfly. Sometimes she'll chase chicken feathers around the yard
Speaker 2: and she'll bark at them. She's just a yacht She's
Speaker 2: a junk yard dog, that's all I'm saying. All Right, y'all,
Speaker 2: have a great weekend or week coming up. I appreciate you,
Speaker 2: and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks.